South: EY achieves strong growth

EY, the professional services firm providing assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services, has reported UK fee-income growth of 7% to £2.150 billion for the year ending July 1, which is up from £2.010b in the previous year. This takes EY’s compound annual growth rate over the last five years to 8%, adding almost £700 million to its revenue. The performance of EY’s 700-strong Thames Valley and South Coast practice was in line with the UK firm’s strong growth.

The slow-down in the run up to the EU Referendum reduced the momentum of EY’s overall performance, however all service lines and regions still reported strong growth over the year. Distributable profits before tax increased by 3% from £437m to £452m.

In the Thames Valley and South Coast region, EY employs 563 people in Reading and 131 in Southampton with a total of 27 partners based across the two offices. Highlights for the year in the region included Richard Baker’s appointment as office managing partner in EY’s Reading office in January 2016, with responsibility for the wider Thames Valley and South Coast region. The firm also appointed two new equity partners, James Harris as assurance partner based in Southampton and Anna Fry as international tax partner based in Reading. 

There were over 200 new joiners across the two regions over the past 12 months, including 80 graduates, school leavers and interns. The EY Foundation supported nine under-privileged year-12 students on its paid work-experience programme Smart Futures, which took place in Reading over the summer. 

Baker said: “The Thames Valley and South Coast is an important market for EY and this has been reflected by the firm’s continued investment in the regional business. Over the past 12 months, we’ve focused on expanding our service line offerings and growing local teams to meet increased demand for our services and strengthen the support EY offers to mid-market firms across the region.” 

Steve Varley, EY’s UK chairman, said of the firm’s overall performance: “We had another good year at EY, with strong growth across all of our service lines, sectors and regions. We invested heavily in new audit tools and made two new digital acquisitions – Seren and Integrc. Our data-analytics capabilities are now a cornerstone of how we deliver and drive our assurance business. Following our audit successes last year with RBS, Royal Dutch Shell and Associated British Foods, we won several new audits in 2015-16, including Thomas Cook, Persimmon, Vedanta and Renishaw.”